05 Apr 2022 DONATION RETURNED
Today, I had the last sentence of the PRESERVATION paragraph on the home page removed. It read: The Image Library is in the collection of the Queensland Museum.
On January 7, I uploaded a post about updating my Image Library for the Queensland Museum and expressed disquiet because the Digital Asset Management System Administrator, Donna Miller, was unaware of my donation when we spoke on January 6. On January 31 I was told by email, that since the donation was made, the Museum had adopted a more rigorous and time-consuming system for adding images to its digital collection and the resources to process my images in a timely fashion did not exist. Moreover, the curation policy requires that the Museum image portals hold the most appropriate, unique and quality images for either staff, public or researchers. This information and the sense that Donna was unfamiliar with the library’s content only intensified my disquiet. I was nonetheless permitted to re-edit my photos from 2014 to 2018 as per the March 11 post.
On March 29, Donna sent me an email rejecting the donation. In yesterday’s reply, I told her that I could not help feeling that she was unfamiliar with and not really interested in, the library’s contents and did not value its raison d’être. The Museum has foregone a unique, donated resource, depicting the rich species variety of a discrete place, which happens to be in the part of the world where the Museum is also located. Most of the images are video frames, which contribute to the library’s uniqueness, and cannot be compared with photos for quality. The saddest part of this affair is that the Museum is unwilling to find a way of making my donation available to the public.
PS 6.4.22 In acknowledging the return of the two USBs I sent to Donna with the library updates and the photo edits, I told her that I wanted all the video frames that I had sent to her predecessor Michelle Ryan returned to me, and explained the numbering system and which sets were SD. I also said that I didn’t know what Michelle had done with them. Donna’s reply took the wind out of my sails. She told me that the Museum has no knowledge of any digital assets I provided to Michelle. My hopes of having the complete image library ready and available have been cruelly dashed. No wonder Donna didn’t know the scope of my donation. I have just emailed her an apology with a request to find out what Michelle did with the video frames.